


Enter This Place in Peace

by silksieve



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-21
Updated: 2010-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:04:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silksieve/pseuds/silksieve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The peace of the camp is broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enter This Place in Peace

She wakes with a start, the roar of the archdemon ringing in her head, and still feels the horrible piercing eyes stare at her, _seeing_ her, boring into her very soul.  She realizes that she is shivering, her skin clammy with a cold sweat.

“You felt it, too?”  Alistair asks, and her body jerks in alarm while she resists an urge to scream. “He saw us that time, didn’t he? He knew we were there.”

She wants to snap at him for stating the obvious, but bites her tongue.  It’s part of his charm, usually, and it’s not his fault that she’s been in a foul mood ever since they climbed down the mountain with a pinch of dust tucked away in her pack.  The Gauntlet is not something she ever wants to experience again.  What she saw there…

Her sleep is ruined at any rate, so she starts pulling on armor and strapping on gear, intending to relieve the second watch.  But her thoughts do not leave her, and she barely hears Alistair as he goes on about their vision, until a sharpness in his voice alerts her to a preternatural rustling in the woods at their back.

Eldritch screams fill the night air as the shrieks slither out of the darkness and surround them.  Everybody is awake now, engaging in battle even though a few are only half dressed, and the mages’ spells light up the camp with bright flashes and explosions of power.  Her melancholy thoughts leave her as she focuses on taking down the creatures.  She notches arrows and lets them fly, straight and fast.  Some of the darkspawn fall and do not get up again, felled by a single true shot.

When the stink of darkspawn blood soaks the ground around their tents, and everyone finally is able to draw breath, she checks to make sure there are no serious injuries before taking a quick scout around the perimeter. 

It is not what she expects.

There is a single shriek still standing at the edge of the woods, and she almost smiles as she pulls her daggers.  After this grueling week, she would gladly fight this darkspawn one-on-one, to lose herself in the visceral combat.

“Stay away from me!” the thing cries when she draws near.  “Do not look upon me!”

He flees her presence, but she runs after him, desperate to catch him before he is lost, again, forever.

When she draws apace, and reaches to touch him, he jerks away, throwing up his hands to shield his face from her view.  “Don’t!” he shouts.  “Don’t look at me!  Don’t touch me!”

He blends into the darkness and the mottled forest, so that she can hardly see him, but she knows this voice.  It is changed, harsh and scratched and afraid, but she has heard it loud in laughter and joy among friends, strong and brave in defense of family and clan, tender and soft beside her ear during quiet nights under starlit skies.  She could pick it out in a hundred voices, appealing to Mythal for Her boundless protection and mercy.  She knows this voice.

“Merciful Creators,” she whispers, and she can’t tell if she is pleading or praying.  Her heart beats too fast, too forcefully.  She wants to be hysterical, but she must stay strong, strong enough this time, strong enough not to fail him again.   “Tamlen? Please, Tamlen, please talk to me.  Tell me what has happened.  I’m here.  I’m here now.”

“No!” he shouts.  “Don’t…want to hurt you, lethallan.”  The endearment pierces more than she thought possible.  “Stay away.  I’m sick.  So sick.  Go away!”

“No, Tamlen, listen to me.  There’s a healer in the camp, a powerful one.  Come back with me and let us help you.  I won’t let you down again, I swear to you.  There are cures.  I know we can help.  Please come with me, Tamlen.  Please!”  Wildly, she thinks of the ashes still in her pack.  If they truly work, if they will free Tamlen of this horrible suffering, she will gladly sacrifice the arl for him. 

“It’s too late.  Too far gone,” he says, and she can see the effort his words are costing him.  “It calls to me, and I am weak, so weak.  I can hear the singing…”  His eyes seem to glaze for a moment before clearing again, and he shakes his head.  “Have pity, lethallan.  Stop me.  End this now.  End the evil.  End me.”

The corruption is strong in him, and she wants to give him peace, but she grasps onto her desperate hope that it does not have to end in loss.  How many times does she have to lose him before the Creators are satisfied in her punishment?   

“No, please, Tamlen,” she says.

“Better this way,” he says, his breathing forced and heavy.  “I brought them here…you’re in danger again, because of me.”

“No, Tamlen, it was me,” she says, wretchedly.  “I could have stopped you.  It was my responsibility to balance you, and I didn’t.  Forgive me.”  She fights the tears that threaten to spill.

“I can’t…hold on,” he says.  “Always…loved you.  I’m sorry, so sorry.”  She sees him breaking, unable to resist the siren call anymore.  His face smoothes, becomes almost peaceful.  As if pulled by invisible strings, he raises his arms.  They punch ineffectually at her, hitting only air, the bodily blades that characterize the shrieks not yet developed.

She backs away in horror, not at what he does or what he has become, but what she _allowed_ to happen.  Her inattention to duty, because she wanted him to smile and tease, caused all this, and she cannot _cannot_ lift her daggers against him.

One of the others—is it Oghren?—shouts an alarm, and she hears pounding feet as her companions rush to her aid, at the perceived threat that they see.

They are brutally efficient, as they are against any darkspawn, not noticing that her weapons have fallen to the ground and that she is trying to scream _Stop!_ and _No!_ and _Do Not!_  Her voice fails her as her throat clogs with terror and misery and regret, and from some detached corner of her mind, she is grateful to see Morrigan use her sleeping spell which might mean that Tamlen will not suffer unduly.

After it is done, the others trickle back to their posts, setting the camp back to rights, muttering amongst themselves, and she wants to strike one of them, violently, that they care only about defenses or lost sleep and do not see the devastation of this night.

Alistair is the only one who notices that something is not right, and he remains at her side while she stares, unseeing, at the corrupted, broken body.

“Who was that?” he asks.

She whirls on him, eyes blazing.  “He has a name!  His name is…was…Tamlen.”  The words are too much for her, and she cannot hold herself in anymore.  She falls to her knees, her body too heavy to hold upright, and the sobs wrench out of her.  Her body shakes with the violence of her cries, and she wraps her arms around herself, because the pain is too sharp, too much, and she will crack into a thousand pieces if she does not.

She feels him kneel beside her, feels a tentative hand on her back.  She turns her face away from him because she does not want to see him see her like this.

After a little while, he says, in a very grave voice, “I’m sorry.  Tamlen?  He was the one who was with you when—“ 

She twists her head sharply, to stop his words, and he falls silent.  She thinks he will go away, but he doesn’t, choosing instead to settle down on the ground next to her, keeping her silent company.  She finds it oddly comforting.

When her body has emptied itself of tears, and her face is streaked with salt, she manages to breathe again.  She thinks back to her childhood, sitting around the campfire, and listing to Paival’s teachings on the Vir Tanadahl.  Only in these last few months has she realized how truly difficult it is to adhere to the Vir when one can only rely on oneself to fly straight and unwavering, to bend but not break.  She thinks maybe she can understand why the city elves have become lost to the elvhenan.

She scrubs her face, and stands.  Tamlen still needs to be cleansed and buried.  She moves to gather his body, and Alistair is there, too.

She looks at him, but he says, “Let me help,” and she does. 

When they have dug a burial mound, she tenderly lowers Tamlen into the care of Falon’Din, and says a few words of prayer, that he may be guided to his rest beyond the Veil.  As she covers him with earth, Alistair sheepishly hands her the sapling cuts he has gathered from some tree.

“Don’t look so surprised,” he says, giving her a small smile.  “You told me, remember?  After…after Ostagar.  Not everything goes in one ear and out the other.”

She hardly knows how to react, and settles for a “Thank you.”

“You probably don’t want to hear this, but it was a mercy,” he says, and she wants to weep again at the deep compassion she hears in his voice.  “The taint affects everyone differently; you’ve seen that yourself.  Your friend must have been strong to have survived, but I know he must also have suffered.  He’s at peace now.  You’ve given him that.”

She doesn’t reply, and he hesitates and looks at her.  “I’m sorry if I said something wrong.  What are you thinking?”

She thinks that this human, who has also sacrificed—and lost—much to duty, might understand after all.  But she doesn’t say it aloud.  Instead, she says, “I don’t know how much you know about the Dalish, but we live by a philosophy, the Way of Three Trees.  I have been thinking how difficult it truly is, how much discipline and self-control it really demands.  But I forgot the third part, the Vir Adahlen or the Way of the Forest.  It means ‘together we are stronger than one.’  Thank you for reminding me.  Perhaps this won't be as difficult as I thought.”

**Author's Note:**

> While "Andaran Atish'an" is the traditional Dalish greeting, it literally translates to "Enter this place in peace."
> 
> This story came out of playing through the event. I couldn't make my Dalish PC attack Tamlen, and so had to watch the party take him out--completely devastating!


End file.
